Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Waterfall WIP

As I said, Wednesdays will be work in progress day. The day when I show you how I go about creating my fibre art pieces.
Today I worked on a landscape with waterfall collage that I designed for my Quilt uni course.
 This is the original idea sketch in my journal.  It is a simple scene with only a few elements and uses the golden rule in composition.  There is a rocky cliff on the left, A waterfall with pool in the centre, and rainforest and ferns on the right.  The ferns are in the foreground, covering the other side of the cliff.  There will also be a dragonfly buzzing around somewhere.
This is my sketch on interfacing 18x14 in.  I have already placed some hand dyed fabric for the sky.

The brown fabric, another hand dye, is what I will use for the cliffs.  On the left is a close up of my sketch of the rocks on the fabric.  This fabric will be extensively thread painted, then trapuntoed to give dimension before I put it on the background.
The green mottled fabric will go under a large amount of FME lace representing trees and ferns in the foreground on the right.

This is my tucked fabric for the pool at the bottom of the scene pinned ready to sew the ripples in, and on the right, pinned in place.  The pool is contructed of an organza overlay over a navy blue piece of cotton, so that when the ripples are sewn in, it will appear to hane depth.

These are a variety of yarns and threads which will be couched in place for the waterfall.  In the picture on the right they are sitting in place and also to the right of them, is some of my Fibre film from yesterday which will form the moss at the edge of the pool.

As you can see, Most of the pieces require some work before the piece can be assembled, and at present it is still only a plan and looks like quite a mess.
Creating art is always about give and take.  At this stage I like how I imagine the pieces will fit together, but you must always be open to change.  Our minds are always learning new things and new ways to do them, so when you look in next week, I cannot guarantee my plan will be the same, however, I hope the piece will be a little closer to being finished and starting to look like more than a mess!